Tuesday, May 7, 2013

How to Lower Your Salt Intake

It is true that on most occasions, a pinch of salt is all that it takes to turn the unpalatable into a delicacy. However, too much salt can not only spoil your food altogether, but also increase your chances of hypertension and cardiac arrests. The following article will help you reduce your salt intake.

1. NO to Table Salt

Do you see the little china jar marked ‘S’ on your table? Good. Now throw it out! The concept of table salt had arisen with early British cooking where foods were

practically left unseasoned. This enabled one to sprinkle salt as per their requirement. Nowadays, cooked foods are perfectly seasoned and the urge to constantly load it with more salt is an extremely detrimental tendency. Instead, consume your meal with the salt quantities that it is cooked in.

2. Avoid Fast Food

Nothing matches up to the comfort of a decadent chicken burger with a large side-dish of fried potatoes. But people mostly remain ignorant to the fact that

the salt content in their burger meal is enough to season all three meals of the day. Mass produced foodstuffs are commercially sold with a heightened salt content, to be able to cater to the differing salt requirements of the public. So even if you require less salt in your chips, you will have to partake of the standardised content. Not only does this spoil your taste, but also violates the optimum requirements of the body.

3. Substitute Spices

If you think that salt is the only spice that can make dishes palatable, you might need to reconsider your concept. A lot of oriental spices come with their

indigenous and varying sodium content, which can be used to add flavour to food. Spices like pepper, basil, oregano, thyme, cumin and coriander are rich in flavour too. Including them in your cooking will reduce your urge to load the dish with salt.

4. Eat Fresh

Nutritionists emphasise on the importance of eating fresh vegetables for a very good reason, mostly because every vegetable is replete in its inherent sodium content. As opposed to the fresh

variety, frozen or canned alternatives load up with salts, to preserve freshness and to make up for the lack of taste. Avoid having processed, deep fried and cured foods and invest in healthy green and leafy vegetables instead. Loading up your food with salt will do nothing to improve the taste. Instead, it will end up upsetting the sodium levels of your body. The steps above will help curb your salt intake and keep the sodium levels in your blood normal.